Talk:Siege of Banu Qurayza

Can you revert to my edit?

Not sure I if I'm allowed to revert back to my edits which expanded on the secular and overall alternate perspectives on this story. I had a mod say that I'd get banned if I revert pages. Said he was warning me so I appreciate the tip! I guess I just ask you guys to do it? Mohammed Al-Keesh (talk) 22:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Unreliable and Little Sources

This article needs to be severely reworked.

For example, the first 3 sources on the result of this are 1) Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri, a member of the ultraconservative Salafi movement, 2) Tafsir Ibn Kathir, the Quran exegesis most used by the aforementioned ultraconservative Salafi movement, and 3) a hadith from Sunan Abi Dawud. However, historians generally do not consider ahadith to be reliable historical sources.

On the other hand, this article does not include the viewpoint of many reliable historians and academics on the subject. Notably, it does not include the viewpoint that the death count of the Banu Qurayza was fabricated by later Muslim states (such as the Abbasid Caliphate):

Juan Cole:

"The few details in the Qur’an do not support, and indeed starkly contradict, the tales of Abbasid-era biographers. It is possible that later Muslim conflicts with Jewish communities in Damascus and Baghdad have been projected back onto the early seventh-century Hejaz and that Jews sometimes have been substituted for a Christian minority or for Sabian tribes who actually allied with Mecca. It is suspicious that the gradual exclusion of Jews from Medina and its environs alleged by the biographers follows the pattern of occasional Christian expulsions of Jews in late antiquity from cities such as Alexandria, Constantinople proper, and Jerusalem, a progression later Muslim converts from Christianity would have thought natural.³⁷ In contrast, the very late Qur’anic chapter of The Table, dated by most scholars to 631–632, speaks of the Believers having common meals with and intermarrying with nonconvert Jews in Medina."

Fred Donner:

"The umma document raises many perplexing questions in view of the traditional sources' description of Muhammad's relations with the Jews of Medina. For example, whereas the traditional sources describe in great detail his conflicts with the three main Jewish clans of Medina-the Qaynuqa', Nadir, and Qurayza–none of these clans is even mentioned in the umma document. How are we to interpret their omission from the document? Is the umma document's silence on them evidence that the document was only drawn up late in Muhammad's life, after these three Jewish tribes had already been vanquished? Or were there once clauses (or other documents) that were simply lost or that were dropped as irrelevant after these tribes were no longer present in Medina? Or should we interpret this silence as evidence that the stories about Muhammad's clashes with the Jews of Medina are greatly exaggerated (or perhaps invented completely) by later Muslim tradition–perhaps as part of the project of depicting Muhammad as a true prophet, which involved overcoming the stubborn resistance of those around him? These and many other questions remain to be resolved by future scholarship."

Tom Holland:

"Later Muslim historians, clearly discombobulated by this, would attempt to explain them away as members of three Jewish clans supposedly native to Medina, who were said initially to have given their backing to the Prophet, and then, after turning fractious, to have been variously driven into exile or massacred and dumped into pits. Yet there are serious difficulties in accepting this tradition as true. It is not simply that the three Jewish clans mentioned by the historians do not feature anywhere in the Constitution of Medina. There is also another, and familiar, problem: that our only sources for the annihilation of these Jews are all suspiciously late. Not only that, but they date from the heyday of Muslim greatness: a period when the authors would have had every interest in fabricating the sanction of the Prophet for the brusque slapping down of uppity infidels.¹³² Certainly, if it were truly the case that entire communities of Jews had been expelled into the desert or else wiped out by Ishmaelites in a bloodbath, then no contemporary seems to have noted it. This, at a time when Jews, just like Christians, had never been more alert to the propaganda value of martyrs, is most peculiar. So peculiar, in fact, as to appear downright implausible."

Mohammedreza al-Khagani (Beyg):

"Drawing on the above discussions, we can infer that:

1. The number of those executed, as recorded in historical sources, cannot be deemed reliable due to the significant time gap between the actual event and the recording its details. Moreover, the problem is exacerbated by their unreliable chains of transmitters.

2. Hadith sources do not provide a historically reliable account of the events. On the contrary, the accounts that historically reliable make no reference to such a large number of victims.

3. Given the Quranic reference to the battle against the Banū Qurayẓa tribe, it cannot be denied that some of their men were killed and some were held captive. However, it can be argued that the death penalty was only applied to their leaders, who had breached their earlier covenant with Prophet Muḥammad and the Muslim community. The exact number of these Jewish leaders is certainly much smaller than the reported figure of 400 to 900 people.

4. If we assume that the fate of Banū Qurayẓa was as described Ibn Isḥāq’s account, then the verdict issued by Saʿd b. Muʿādh would not have been unusual for the Jews. Rather, he was certainly aware of their faith and religious laws, hence his verdict was consistent with what is indicated in the Old Testament and Jewish religion (Deut. 20:13-14).

5. Finally, one could consider Juan Cole’s interpretation, which suggests that reports containing very large numbers of executed Jews were fabricated in the Abbasid period. The accuracy of this possibility can be assessed by examining the relationship between the Abbasids and the Jews during the Abbasid caliphate (Cole 2018, 53-54)."

Sadik Kirzali:

"[T]he analysis of the evidence put forward in this article strongly supports that Ibn Isḥāq’s account of a mass execution is unauthentic and does not reflect the true scale of the incident, as there are many contradictions with the incident details reported by Ibn Isḥāq. When reading sīrah materials, especially in serious issues like this, cross-checking and cross-proofing must be provided. Otherwise, one can make the same mistake as many other Muslim and non-Muslim historians and authors who uncritically base their works on Ibn Isḥāq. A critical approach should be ubiquitous in every historical research. A critical re-examination of Ibn Isḥāq’s own account and other relevant evidence show the incident surrounding the Banū Qurayẓah definitely took place, but the number of Jews executed was significantly less than what was reported by Ibn Isḥāq."

W.N. Arafat:

"On examination, details of the story can be challenged. It can be demonstrated that the assertion that 600 or 800 or 900⁷ men of Banu Qurayza were put to death in cold blood cannot be true; that it is a later invention; and that it has its source in Jewish tradition."

Geo (talk) 21:28, 26 December 2024 (UTC)